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The Shame of Modern Greece

The country suffers from a lack of moral leadership denouncing the embarrassment of anti-Semitism.

By

Andrew Apostolou

Updated Jan. 20, 2010 6:10 p.m. ET

The repeat arson attacks on a synagogue in Greece demonstrate that Turkey is not the only Mediterranean democracy cursed with anti-Semitism. Arsonists have attacked the Etz Hayyim synagogue in Chania, on the Greek island of Crete, twice this year. The fires on Jan. 5 and 17 have inflicted substantial damage on a structure that was only restored in 1999 after lying derelict since the Holocaust. The attempts to destroy Crete's only synagogue follow a spate of vandalism of Jewish graves in Ioannina in northwestern Greece.